“Aloha Aina” is a term that has been used in a lot of different ways over the past century or more.

The Aloha Aina Party was a Hawaiian political organization in the period leading up to and continuing after the overthrow of the Kingdom. Mid-century, there was a successful racehorse by that name. In the 1950s, there was a prominent local tour company, Aloha Aina Tours, often mentioned in the news.

But in usage today, it’s a world view at the core of the modern Hawaiian cultural and political renaissance.

From Wikipedia:

Aloha ??ina also means Hawaiian patriotism; love for the land and it?s people. It is an in-depth relationship between the places and communities that hold significance to the individual. As such, it is an ethic that includes striving to improve the well-being of Hawai?i and engaging in experiences that foster aloha for and life-long allegiance to ka l?hui Hawai?i and ka pae ??ina o Hawai?i. According to Jon Osorio, Professor at the Kamakak?okalani Center for Hawaiian Studies: “Aloha ‘?ina is a relationship not just with the land but really with nature itself and in particular that part of the land and sea and streams and water that actually sustains life. ‘?i is the word that means to eat and when we say ‘?ina we’re talking basically about what it is that feeds not just humans but basically everything, and everything is directly dependent and interdependent with the ‘?ina.

I was going through several boxes of my old files preparing for an interview about my involvement in the movement to stop the Navy’s bombing of Kahoolawe, and ran this gem.

It’s a single page leaflet distributed at a workshop held at Maui Community College on Valentines Day 1976, just six weeks after the first protest landing on Kahoolawe brought opposition to the bombing directly to the public.

It was, as far as I can tell, the first use of the phrase “Aloha Aina” in its modern usage, signifying a world view that places protection of the land, in a physical and spiritual sense, along with the people and communities that depend on it, above other considerations, taking land out of the category of “commodity” to be bought and sold, and putting in in a separate category to be protected and nourished.

It is signed by Emma DeFries, who was a spiritual force very much entwined with what became known as the Protect Kahoolawe Ohana, and Walter Ritte, who signed on behalf of the Protect Kahoolawe Aloha Aina Ohana.

Searching Newspapers.com, I didn’t find any published use of the term for several years after this, although it quickly found its way into active use after this, at least within the Kahoolawe and broader Native Hawaiian activist movements.

I love discovering that a bit of paper saved from the closest wastebasket in 1976 has become a bit of history over the intervening decades.